I've read books in school that were written by ideological rote - they were brainwashers. Therefore, any art, any literature, that has a clearly defined political goal is repellent to me.

I want to make money, and I would like to have a lot of money, but I still believe that the only reason to write is that somehow it will make something or somebody better.

Where can you go from nowhere, except deeper into nowhere?

Our daughter was born in Chicago, and she's already showing it. The temperature has to be approaching zero for her to wear a hat.

A particular piece of music attaches itself to the piece I'm writing, and there is nothing else I can listen to. Every day I return to the same space to write, the music providing both the walls and the pictures on the walls.

I long for, not a writer's retreat - I can write in any situation - but a reader's retreat.

You devise ways to tell a story that complies with your sensibility. Style and method are really extensions of your present sensibility.